Vince Clarke and Martin Gore: Techno Prisoners

After 30 years of virtually no contact with each other, two former Depeche Mode musicians have teamed up to go Berlin-style techno. Vince Clarke (tragedy) left Depeche Mode after writing most of the band’s 1981 debut album Speak & Spell and was replaced by Martin Gore (comedy), who became the band’s primary songwriter. Clarke, you might remember, went on to form the bands Yaz and Erasure. “I got an email from Vince completely out of the blue,” Gore told the Los Angeles Times. “He said he was thinking about making a techno album and wanted to know if I was interested in collaborating with him.” He was. Now calling their union VCMG, the music legends’ first album, on Mute Records, is called Ssss and drops next Tuesday. And from all reports it bears no remsemblance to the guys’ previous sound. Ssss, according to the Times, “is composed entirely of all-instrumental club bangers, each song pumping with a relentless 4/4 thump that would set alight any contemporary dance floor.” (LATimes)